A browser-based FPS called Man vs Machine was host to the record-setting largest online gaming session ever, with 999 simultaneous online players joining together in session on Monday. According to CEO Christian Lönnholm of MuchDifferent, the Swedish non-profit technology organization that developed Man vs Machine, the record was confirmed by Guinness World Records and is now an official world record.
With so many human players playing on two teams against each other, it"s no wonder that balance was a tricky issue for the MuchDifferent developers. Lönnholm admitted in the blog post that for the first half hour the score was overwhelmingly in favor of Team Man. After some adjustments, Team Machine took the advantage and at the end of the massive two-hour gaming session, Team Man was not even able to leave their spawning area.
"Getting a game balanced is hard and our guesswork proved to be quite off the mark. In the end, I think most people had an enjoyable experience of the sheer massiveness of it all and having the game run smoothly helped with that," Lönnholm said.
MuchDifferent had hoped to get a full thousand players in the game, but Internet unpredictability prevented that from happening, with players constantly timing out or logging out. The previous unofficial record was held by PlanetSide with 600 players, which Man vs Machine handily defeated with its 999 players in a two-hour game.
Lönnholm said that the company will continue to improve the technology and tools behind Man vs Machine for making other online games.
A video of the gigantic game can be seen below. DISCLAIMER: Some profanity appears in the game"s text chat.